By Vandana Kannan, Biodiversity Conservation
Dr. Kaberi Kar Gupta, well-known for her pioneering research on slender lorises in India, visited Keystone Foundation between 7th and 9th April 2025. From founding the Urban Slender Loris Project to hosting the “Women of the Wild India” series, Dr. Kaberi leads projects that bridge research, conservation, and education across global contexts. She worked as a senior research fellow and biologist in Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR) and Arunachal Pradesh, has decade-long experience as a professor at California State University and Fresno Community College, and is currently affiliated with the Biodiversity Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science, USA.
Dr. Kaberi presented two topics to the Keystone team, ‘Mating Strategies of the Slender Loris’ and ‘Guardians of the Night: Exploring the Role of Loris and Citizen Science in Conserving Urban Jungles’. The talks covered Dr Kaberi’s findings on loris ecology. This included mating behavior and home range by radio collaring the animals, and her experience with the citizen science project, sparking a lot of discussions and curiosity among the audience. We also had interesting discussions on gender equity in academia and conservation,
which Dr Kaberi has advocated for several years.
Furthermore, Dr Kaberi spoke with members of the different programmes at Keystone, learning about our work in the Nilgiris and beyond. She visited some of the coexistence villages around Kotagiri to learn about the human-wildlife conflict mitigation work. As someone who is also starting long-term research on slender lorises in the Dhimbam hills, I was fortunate to have several discussions with Dr Kaberi, learning about loris behavior, gaining insights into our research methods, and feeling more inspired to be a woman working in ecology and conservation.
